


come on bartender won't you be more tender

by TheJGatsby



Series: potentially lovely perpetually human [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mostly Fluff, Post-Canon, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 23:02:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5983618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJGatsby/pseuds/TheJGatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she runs, he finds himself following.<br/>(Or, the one with the bar)</p>
            </blockquote>





	come on bartender won't you be more tender

**Author's Note:**

> Set between “good is better than perfect” and “one more time with feeling,” closer to “one more time,” the first of the Context Timestamps I've been promising all my reviewers and failing utterly to deliver on.  
> Written in ~2 hours and completely unbeta'd, so have mercy I guess
> 
> Title from Bartender by Regina Spektor because, like, obviously

 

 

It always feels… creepy, knowing where she is. Perverse, almost, because he knows she would hate it if she knew, if she could tell. But he’s got more experience than her, especially with guarding himself and hiding himself in the Force, so she never will know unless he wants her to. And he knows she would especially hate the way he seems fixated on her, but he can’t help it- he’s aimless without his loyalties, his only motivation towards motion being the need to keep running, evading the First Order at every turn. It’s a strange, liminal existence, and it makes him restless, but she’s like a compass point, giving him somewhere to direct himself. He’s not really sure about a lot, about his place in the world or what he should do, but he has faith in her in a general, unexamined sort of way, so she’s his point of reference in this mess of a galaxy.

He doesn’t know where she’s going now, she seems to be jumping in and out of hyperspace at random, and her presence is roiling with emotion- anguish, conflict, fury, disgust, grief. He’s… not worried, because he doesn’t  _ do _ worried, especially not about her, his former enemy, but. His hand twitches on the control of the shitty, falling-apart freighter he borrowed from a junkyard with the aid of the Force, and his foot taps anxiously. Finally she seems to settle, stopping in one place, still buzzing with uninhibited feeling. He pulls up a starmap and examines it for a moment and- there. That system. He can feel it. In a moment he’s soaring through the atmosphere, and then he’s in hyperspace, his gut in a knot of something he refuses to put words to.

Just because he doesn’t want to kill her doesn’t mean he  _ cares _ or anything.

He closes his eyes and follows his gut to where she’s landed, her aura having settled and calmed into a blurry sort of despair. There’s only one other ship in the spaceport, and he can feel her presence lingering on it, so he knows he’s in the right place. He opts for a light, cloakish cape and a nondescript scarf, wrapping his face and covering his head so only his eyes show. The universe at large may not know his face, but she would, and she’s clearly upset enough without-  _ no _ , he’s hiding because she’ll kill him on sight and he doesn’t want to die. It’s not out of consideration for her feelings. He doesn’t care about her feelings.

Her presence leads him to a grimy bar, out of the way, relatively deserted. She’s slumped at the counter, fiddling with a small glass in front of her. As he sits carefully in the shadows of the corner, she tosses back the liquid inside and makes a face, scrunching her nose. He catches himself smiling at the sight and chastises himself, scowling. She gestures vaguely for the bartender, who grimaces and gently tries to take the glass from her, but she glares at him and waves her hand, and the bartender goes blank for a moment before obligingly pouring her another shot. She tosses it back, then slumps forward again, resting her head on her hands. Her shoulders start to shake after a long moment, and from the corner he can feel the misery rolling off her in waves, and he finally gives in and moves towards the bar, easing himself onto the stool next to her.

“She belong to you?” growls the bartender, and he glances between the bartender and the Jedi before answering.

“Yeah, she’s… yes. I’ll take care of her. Sorry for any trouble she’s caused.” The bartender waves his hand dismissively. She’s looking at him now, her eyes distant and bleary.

“I don’t think I do belong to you,” she slurs. He doesn’t see her hand move, but then the Force is tugging his scarf away from his face and throwing his hood back, and for all he scrambles to cover himself, her eyes are already alight with recognition, and she smiles at him, which takes him by surprise. “Hello, nemesis. Are you here to kill me?”

“Not this time,” he responds, quirking an eyebrow. “It wouldn’t be a fair fight, as sloshed as you are.”

She rolls her eyes and snorts, propping her chin on her arms and looking away from him. “Please, I could wipe the floor with you.”

“I’m sure you’d like to try.” She sits up, suddenly, and when she sways in her seat he reaches out to catch her. “Do you think you ought to head back to… wherever that isn’t here?” he tries, in as gentle a voice as he can muster. He’s honestly not sure how well it comes across, ‘gentle’ has never been his tack, but she pouts at him regardless, clamping her hands onto her seat as if daring him to try and take her away. “Okay, well, you can’t say I didn’t try.”

“Why are you here, if you’re not going to kill me?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at him in what’s probably meant to be a searching way but, due to her inebriated state, looks more like she’s trying to read incredibly fine print.

“I could ask the same of you,” he replies evenly, hoping she’s drunk enough not to pursue her line of questioning.

She sighs heavily. “I wanted to drink until I died or forgot everything,” she says, back to fiddling with her shot glass and looking wretched.

He blinks, flabbergasted. “Why?”

“Because I killed people.” Her voice is soft, now, serious, and he’s not sure if the ache in his chest is because he can feel her pain through the Force or because she looks fucking despondent and it’s breaking his heart and he- is stopping that train of thought right there. “Innocent people,” she continues. “People who were just… in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Her shoulders tense and she squeezes her hand, shattering the glass with the Force. “But you wouldn’t understand what it feels like to regret that.”

“No, I do.” And it’s not a lie. He remembers it, too, with glaring detail- sixteen years old and staring at a group of huddled women and children, their eyes wide and terrified as they begged him to have mercy, Snoke’s voice in his ear telling him to just get it over with, shaking his head violently, the moment his master wrested control from him and swung his saber, cutting a little boy cleanly in half. The boy’s hand fell open as his top half hit the ground and a doll made of twigs rolled out onto the dirt ground. Snoke let go of him, and he remembers reaching out with one shaking hand and picking up the doll, hot tears running down his face at the horror he’d just committed. For months his nightmares were of the boy’s startled face, the twig doll, the smell of charred flesh, and that was when he stopped sleeping more than an hour or two at a time. “Even monsters feel remorse.”

“I could have saved them,” she murmurs, running a thumb over one of the larger shards of glass. He reaches out and takes her hands away from the shattered mess, enveloping them in his on the sticky bar, and she doesn’t pull away. She’s crying again, her voice ragged. “And Leia and Poe said that- that’s what happens, sometimes, that there are casualties and you can’t save everyone, but….”

“They were right,” he says, running a thumb over her knuckles, doing his best impression of comforting. “You can’t always save everyone, and I know you want to, but it’s war and sometimes people get caught in the crossfire who should have been safe.”

“I could have saved them!” she sobs, curling forward and pressing her forehead against their joined hands. It hits him with an uncomfortable jolt that even if he had succeeded in turning her to the dark side, it would have been useless- she would have been terrible at the awful things the Dark requires, it would have broken her. He’s immensely grateful for his failure. “I should have saved them, it’s my  _ fault _ -”

“No,” he interrupts, firm. “It’s the war’s fault. All of it is just the war’s fault. You did what you could.” He extricates one of his hands and starts rubbing soothing circles in her shoulders. “You did what you could.”

“It wasn’t enough.” She lets out a heavy, shuddering breath. “It should have been me, not them. If I could just- if I could go back and… it should have been me.”

His heart twists painfully, the thought of a galaxy without her in it something too enormous and dreadful to confront head-on, for reasons he’s not going to think about. He might care a little. He really, really doesn’t want her to die. “You can’t change the past, and you drinking yourself to death won’t bring them back.”

“I hate war,” she says, quiet and sad.

“Me too.”

He’s not sure how long they’re sitting there, but at some point she falls asleep, or maybe passes out, and he stands, lifting her gently into his arms and carrying her like he did on Takodana. The similarity is jarring- Takodana feels like another lifetime, a different man, someone he feels sick thinking of now. She sighs and presses her face into his shoulder and his arms curl tighter around her. She’s light and solid and he feels something behind his ribs like yearning and satisfaction all at once, and for all he steadfastly ignores the feeling, even he has to admit that he likes this, likes holding her and having her close to him, likes the feeling of her warm breath on his neck. Likes it more than he’s entirely comfortable with.

It’s not a long walk back to the spaceport, and her ship is a small cargo vessel, single pilot, and he finds the bunk in a tiny room just off the hold. She mumbles and frowns as he lays her down, one of her hands clinging to the front of his shirt for a moment before it drops next to her. He takes off her boots and sets them on the floor under the bunk, carefully turns her on her side on a vague memory of someone warning him about drunk people and safety, tugs the blanket over her shoulder. She looks peaceful, and he’s almost loathe to leave, but he tears his eyes from her sleeping form and shuts the door behind him.

He doesn’t sleep that night, not until he feels her wake, confused and forgetful, and leave the planet behind. He convinces himself it’s for the best she doesn’t remember, but can’t help wishing she did anyway. He’s not going to examine that desire, just like he’s not going to examine last night, or any of the warm and unsettlingly pleasant feelings he has about her. It’s too much, and she’s too good, and he’s too unsure of himself, so he jumps into lightspeed and takes himself to the other side of the galaxy, far away from her.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://thejgatsbykid.tumblr.com)!


End file.
